Download or read book Conversational Enlightenment written by David Randall and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the spread of the concept of conversation during the Enlightenment, including the project of politeness, the fine arts, philosophy and public opinion. The book narrates this triumph of conversational style and thought partly as a succession to the oratorical rhetoric that characterized the Renaissance and partly as the victory of the only mode of speech that recognized women as women, and not as imitation men. It also rewrites Jürgen Habermas' history of the public sphere as the history of rational conversation.